For many people, gaming is a social thing. I tend to favor RPGs and long single player experiences, but even my life is punctuated by periods when gaming means being with someone.

Recently, I saw the Co-op trailer for Child of Light. One of the first things I did was to show my fiancee, see if she was interested. She was delighted at the idea, laughing, and calling herself my "spark." This got me thinking about games as something to share, and about all the times that videogames have brought me closer to someone in my life.

My eldest brother, who got me into games: always competing. He'd smash me in Double Dragon, crush me in Street Fighter II, and beat every Final Fantasy before I could. I don't think I ever beat him in a match of Mortal Kombat or won a race in F-Zero. He was also my gate to Nintendo Power, since he had the subscription. I was his guides guy because of it, but then we were beating the game together. Even as adults, most of what we talk about are fantasy books, videogames, comics and movies.

My best friend, the Playstation guy. We'd play any multiplayer RPG we could get our hands on. Earlier games like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III (USA), SNES Lord of the Rings, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Phantasy Star Online, Gladius, Tales of "all of them", a variety of Tactics games, and many others that I'm surely missing. All the other time was spend on Smash Bros. For six year, every Friday night was Smash and Pizza night. That's despite going to different schools for the last four of those years. That's a bond forged with games.

My college roommate, who wasn't too much of a gamer. The first time she saw me playing a Final Fantasy game, she had no idea what was going on nor how I was controlling anything. After a year we were destroying people in doubles Soul Calibur 2 matches. We could play Ikaruga on Hard and need one continue between us to beat the game. Then I shared the RPGs: Knights of the Old Republic was first. I was like a prairie fire across the dorm. Over the years, I'd come back to my apartment to see Final Fantasy (4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12), Kingdom Hearts (1, 2, DS, PSP), or Zelda (OoT, MM, TwPr, both DS games) being played, it was a constant nostalgia trip.

I'm still close with all of them, but have uprooted and now live with my fiancee. She plays videogames with me and I play boardgames with her. We're currently into DKC: Tropical Freeze. Usually she hates platformers, but we are having a blast with this one. We have weekly Pokemon battles. Now, we are both looking forward to Child of Light. I reflect on all of this, I look at the games industry and geek culture generally, and I'm thankful for all the great thing we can share with our loved ones.